What’s the Deal: East Meets West in Manhattan

A San Francisco-based landlord is getting in on New York City’s growing tech scene.

DivcoWest last week purchased a set of early-20th-century office buildings in the burgeoning Midtown South office district in partnership with a company controlled by New York-based real-estate investor Bruce Brickman, the companies said. The price was about $114 million, according to a person told of the details of the deal. The buildings include about 270,000 square feet of space.

The companies’ plan for the buildings—24-28 W. 25th St. and 40 W. 25th St.—has become a familiar one in the area: fill the offices with creative firms such as tech companies. The Midtown South area, particularly in the blocks farther south by Union Square, has been a magnet for such firms. It had a vacancy rate of 5.8% in February, well below the 8.1% seen in central Midtown, according to CBRE Group Inc. CBG +1.34%

DivcoWest typically focuses on the West Coast, and owns extensive property in Northern California. The company, led by Chief Executive Stuart Shiff, has been expanding and recently bought similarly old, tech-oriented buildings in Boston.

DivcoWest and Brickman bought the buildings from Yeshiva University. A spokesman for the school said the buildings were part of an estate left to the university’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and money from the sale will go toward biomedical research.